Guilty verdict in daycare rape trial

TAMPA - A jury has found 19-year-old Kendrick Morris guilty on all counts in the rape of a daycare worker in 2007.

Morris was charged with three counts of sexual battery, burglary with assault and battery, and robbery with a deadly weapon.

Prosecutors said Morris forced his way into the daycare as the worker was opening the facility, threatened her with a knife and raped her.

The victim took the stand this week and offered emotional, graphic testimony about what happened to her.

Morris was not suspected in the case until DNA from another rape case linked him to it. His defense attorneys said the DNA was contaminated’but prosecutors said chances were in the quadrillions that the DNA belonged to anyone else.

The jury heard closing arguments Thursday morning, including pointed comments from the prosecutor that Morris was indeed the one who committed the crime.

"This is the rapist," prosecutor Mike Sinacore stated, pointing at a figure seen in surveillance video from the day care center, dressed in black. "This masked intruder brandishing a knife is the rapist.

"This is the rapist," Sinacore continued, holding a photo of Morris up for the jury to see. "This individual photographed 10 months after the crime."

Sinacore again repeated himself as he stood pointing at Morris, seated with his defense team.

"The state has done a good job here today in putting up a bunch of smoke screens trying to make the evidence fit the way they wanted to," defense attorney Maria Pavlidis said in her closing statement.

She mentioned the photograph of Morris that Sinacore had held up, reminding jurors of the testimony from the technician who took the photo and said the picture had been slimmed down and shrunk.

"Slimmed down, I submit to you, to try to make it fit the photographs from that video," Pavlidis continued. "There's a lot of circumstantial evidence that the state is throwing out to you, but no real evidence to establish that it was Mr. Morris."

Morris is expected to go to trial for the library rape case later this fall.